Questions of the Week XIV

Questions of the Week XIV

With the pending release and some important issues we decide to make a minor update to the plugin today to introduce some improvements. We want the GUI builder to stabilize so we can finally crown it as "the" GUI builder rather than as "the new" GUI builder. To do that we need you guys to use it and submit issues, we also need you to use the latest version…​

With this release we added a lot of bug fixes and a few minor cosmetic improvements that should help narrow the gap with the old GUI builder. We are in the final stretch for 3.5 which means this is the time where features might be dropped. The biggest risk right now is the new build servers, we really want to do this before the 3.5 release but with our current workload this might get delayed to September.

On stackoverflow things have been going on as usual:

How to add Google Map Container to GUI builder on Codename One?

When asking about the gui builder you need to be very clear about which version you are using, the old or the new GUI builder.

Databases in Codename One

UWP issue

UWP still has a lot of bugs, it will be at alpha/beta grade for the 3.5 release as it’s still a completely new port. It’s even new for Microsoft with whom we are experiencing a long conversation trying to get apps thru the store approval process.

Actionlistener in the command of the side menu opens blank form but the same in the button action listener opens the form normally

Toolbar search customization

We didn’t expose ways to customize the search functionality too much but because the toolbar is so darn flexible you can easily customize it yourself and we still have the sample that predated the builtin search.

Open picture on iOS with execute()

Text not showing using Roboto or Keep Calm Medium font on iOS

Fonts work very differently between Android/iOS and we make a great deal of effort trying to make them behave "seamlessly". This seamlessness works when we have control (e.g. the theme) but is somewhat broken in the lower level API’s.

Can swift code be used in Codename One native code instead of Objective-C

Can the arguments be named as desired when using native code?

Yes for platforms other than iOS. Objective-C considers argument names to be a part of the method signature so if you change the names everything will fail. That’s why we named them in this particular way.

How do you show a video in it’s correct dimensions?

Sizing peer and native components especially ones that require loading such as video or html is really problematic. That’s why we always recommend placing them in the center of the border layout (with the default setting). This stretches them over the entire available space so their preferred size will be irrelevant.

Shai is the co-founder of Codename One. He's been a professional programmer for over 25 years. During that time he has worked with dozens of companies including Sun Microsystems. For more follow Shai on Twitter & github.